Pereira Maintains, by Antonio Tabucchi is an unusual book. It's written as if it is the report of a third party who has been interrogating the central character - Doctor Pereira - about his life. This brings a certain menace from the very beginning. Set in a sweltering summer of 1930's Portugal during the Spanish Civil War and the early days of the fascist regime in Germany, we find Doctor Pereira, editor of the cultural page of The Lisboa newspaper, just getting on with life. He talks to the photograph of his dead wife, eats omelettes almost exclusively and drinks lemonade, in between translating French stories into Portugese for the paper. That's pretty much it. Morbidly obese and with a heart problem, he is drifting along in his own little world until he meets a young couple who slowly but surely turn his life upside-down. They open his eyes to what is starting to happen in his own country and wake him up to the insidious march of fascism - and that he can no longer turn a blind eye to it! I read this in audio with Derek Jacobi narrating, which was an absolute pleasure. He brought all the poetry of the text to life (this is translated from a Italian novel) and it slowly sucks you in and is an absolute pleasure to read. I will definitely seek out more books by this author who sadly died earlier this year.
My STAR rating: FOUR.
Length: 208 print pages.
Price I paid: £7.99.
Formats available: print; ebook; unabridged audio download.
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